Vacations over for Colorado State football players

Jun. 17, 2013

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Summer doesn’t officially begin until Friday but vacations are already over for the players on CSU’s football team.

All but a few of the 85 players on scholarship for the coming season and many of the walk-ons will be back on campus Monday, taking a class or two in summer school and participating in the Rams’ eight-week summer conditioning program.

Mike Kent, the Rams’ strength coach, and his staff run the conditioning program to get players in peak shape physically for the start of fall camp at the beginning of August. The football coaching staff is forbidden by NCAA rules from working directly with the players until then.

Instead, players put together their own informal practice sessions, working on various formations and plays so they’re ready to go mentally in August.

The Rams return eight starters on offense, including quarterback Garrett Grayson and leading rusher Donnell Alexander. The defense returns six starters, including leading tackler Aaron Davis. The Rams went 4-8 overall and 3-5 in Mountain West Conference games last year under first-year coach Jim McElwain. They finished the season on a bit of a roll, winning three of their last five games after dropping six in a row following a season-opening win over the University of Colorado.

“We just need to take advantage of our offseason film work, come out here and work on our conditioning, our footwork, everything that we can possibly do to make ourself a better athlete and a better player,” senior linebacker Shaquil Barrett said. “We need to do everything we can to help the team out during the offseason.”

The offseason, McElwain said, is when teams are built.

“This is when your team really grows its identity,” McElwain said in a recent interview. “The way the rules are written, this is about our team becoming one. This is about them coming together and really making a commitment in a lot of ways, creating their mission statement. This is where it’s going to come from is what they do over the summer.”

Grayson earned the starting quarterback job last fall based as much on the leadership he displayed over the summer than anything he did the previous spring, McElwain said. He’ll need to do the same this summer to keep the job, after battling sophomore Conner Smith throughout spring practices and gaining a slight edge. The Rams open the 2013 season Sept. 1 in Denver against the University of Colorado.

Five of the 24 players the Rams introduced in their 2013 signing class in February were on campus for spring practices to get an early start on their college careers. All but three of the others — players whose high schools hadn’t let out yet for the summer — were scheduled to arrive over the weekend, McElwain said. The entire squad will be on campus by July 8, when the next session of summer school begins, he said.

So for college football players, vacation’s over before summer begins.